There was a thread about it (perhaps not the best named one) that got deleted without a trace. That's not very nice, in my opinion, though it's obviously up to the moderators and forum owners to decide. It's a bit disappointing, though.

Anyway, all I wanted to say is that Ijyb change is particularly strange to me. Not just because he's one of the oldest monsters in the line (at least as far as I know), but also because another goblin/hobgoblin early game unique was added recently, Robin, who was female from the inception. So now we have two female goblin uniques. Maybe their society is matriarchal? Crawl has the deepest lore indeed. Oh, and I don't care for Cerebov's change either, he will always be a big fiery guy for me. Anyway, what do you think?

Sar wrote:Anyway, all I wanted to say is that Ijyb change is particularly strange to me. Not just because he's one of the oldest monsters in the line (at least as far as I know), but also because another goblin/hobgoblin early game unique was added recently, Robin, who was female from the inception. So now we have two female goblin uniques. Maybe their society is matriarchal? Crawl has the deepest lore indeed. Oh, and I don't care for Cerebov's change either, he will always be a big fiery guy for me. Anyway, what do you think?

I agree that some of these changes feel weird. Though Grinder and Cerebov are the big weird feeling ones to me.

I'm also curious as to why these changes were made, given that from what I remembered the overwhelming majority of the crawl uniques that had a gender were female anyways, and this further polarizes that.

Sar wrote:There was a thread about it (perhaps not the best named one) that got deleted without a trace. That's not very nice, in my opinion, though it's obviously up to the moderators and forum owners to decide. It's a bit disappointing, though.

The thread in question was removed because there was 1) no content in the thread and 2) no way to make the thread acceptable without changing everything about it. I told the OP that he was welcome to start the thread back up without the sexist remarks, but he has thusfar declined to do so.

WalrusKing wrote:I'm also curious as to why these changes were made, given that from what I remembered the overwhelming majority of the crawl uniques that had a gender were female anyways, and this further polarizes that.

Nope, the opposite. Majority male both before and after the change. Studies have shown that many people, men and women, can perceive as little as 1:10 female-to-male ratio as being about gender equal, presumably because the women that are noticed are more noteworthy by virtue of being less expected.

The why is pretty simple: more equitable distribution of unique's genders, which I consider self-evidently positive. I think it was poor design for a game so unfocused on gender to be overtly male skewed when gender did appear.

while we're on the subject, it kind of bothers me that the game makes a point of picking on my physical appearance in my description. like, it doesn't matter how I look when I'm killing you. and the game doesn't insult any other elves or humans in that way

Laugh all you want, its being done for arbitrary reasons, which don't make sense. But being arbitrary, they don't have to make sense.

I'm all for equality and everything, but I think it is PC nonsense to change things like this to fit the current political climate. Keep your politics out of DCSS please, its bad enough they permeate just about every other facet of the internet.You want more female uniques? Add more. There's no reason to gender-bend the existing ones when there is an obvious and easy solution.

I am really happy that our gods have no genders. Ideally (to me), that'd also hold for uniques: I mean, as humans/kobolds/etc., they would have genders, but we wouldn't disclose them because it doesn't matter. That's a bit harder, though: you have to avoid names like Sigmund and Adolf and Jozef.

Most devs believe there are too many uniques already, so "add more" is not an option.

I don't think changing some genders is any more (or less) political than picking genders was in the first place. Or more pertinently, no more or less political than removing spell book descriptions including rape.

infinitevox wrote:Laugh all you want, its being done for arbitrary reasons, which don't make sense. But being arbitrary, they don't have to make sense.

I'm all for equality and everything, but I think it is PC nonsense to change things like this to fit the current political climate. Keep your politics out of DCSS please, its bad enough they permeate just about every other facet of the internet.You want more female uniques? Add more. There's no reason to gender-bend the existing ones when there is an obvious and easy solution.

changing the gender of existing uniques is a far more obvious and easier solution than adding a bunch of new uniques solely because a few tavern users don't like the idea of women existing

chequers wrote:Most devs believe there are too many uniques already, so "add more" is not an option.

WalrusKing wrote:I'm also curious as to why these changes were made, given that from what I remembered the overwhelming majority of the crawl uniques that had a gender were female anyways, and this further polarizes that.

Nope, the opposite. Majority male both before and after the change. Studies have shown that many people, men and women, can perceive as little as 1:10 female-to-male ratio as being about gender equal, presumably because the women that are noticed are more noteworthy by virtue of being less expected.

Actually, I'd just assumed that the list on the learndb was complete and correct, which it apparently wasn't (By a lot too, as it turns out. I assume it was only made for humanoids or something? Not sure. Got what I deserved by not code diving I guess)

On the whole I'm close to ambivalent about this change, though I am still irked at the change to Cerebov and Grinder in particular.

duvessa wrote:changing the gender of existing uniques is a far more obvious and easier solution than adding a bunch of new uniques solely because a few tavern users don't like the idea of women existing

Come on now, there is no need to be hyperbolic here. It has absolutely nothing to do with "don't like the idea of women existing." And to be quite honest, that's a very tired and worn out sentiment.

It has more to do with: I never gave any thought whatsoever to the gender "balance" of the unique mobs until the commit and this thread. But because someone out there has a political agenda to make everything "PC", attention has been drawn to it. Perhaps it's my own short-coming as a person, but I fail to see why this was a problem at all. So now all I see is someone making something from nothing in some attempt to seem "progressive", which in addition to being both tedious and annoying, also violates the 1st law of thermodynamics.

In short:I don't give two shits if you're a demi-sexual furry who identifies as a Cuisinart, let's just keep all the politics & agendas out of something that we all do for fun and to decompress from the rest of this crazy world please.

If you don't care about the male/female ratio, then you shouldn't be that bothered by this change. In gameplay terms the change is cosmetic. The people who are making something out of it aren't those who made the change, which was done rather quietly, but rather those complaining about it.

If whatever the ratio is isn't a problem, then don't make the new ratio a problem.

if i can throw my hat into the gendersexual-bikeshed arena (the worst possible of all arenas) could we please be consistent and either genderize the demon lords again (what sexes? i don't care) or make all demons neuter? i prefer the latter but w/e i want consistency more than anything

Arrhythmia wrote:if i can throw my hat into the gendersexual-bikeshed arena (the worst possible of all arenas) could we please be consistent and either genderize the demon lords again (what sexes? i don't care) or make all demons neuter? i prefer the latter but w/e i want consistency more than anything

While there exists plenty exceptions in the animal kingdom, it doesn't really make sense for a humanoid female to be superior in physical prowess to their male counterparts(particularly in the context of crawl, in which it seems nearly all enemies are trained for battle). Perhaps magical prowess or even dexterity, but physical prowess is a characteristic of males with few exceptions.

Ijyb and cerebov are not characterized by magical prowess(even a lowly salamander can cast fire storm!) or dexterity, they are defined by their much larger HP pools and physical ability compared to their counterparts. For this reason it makes more sense for them to be male. Ereshkigels for example makes sense, as she is defined by her high evasion and her unusually high HP can be explained by her existence as an archdemon(even then her HP is about average with the other archdemons, which again would make sense).

Occasionally swaying from the norm like the way Dowan and Duvessa do is amusing and certainly very flavorful, but its a bad idea to delude that by flooding the game with female uniques that don't have any reason to be female outside of "just cuz."

Then again, this is a fantasy world where sandy beaches and oceans exist under ground and giant ant men can dig through rock walls as fast as they can run. So its not like extreme outliars existing often is that hard to swallow.

To all new players: Ignore all strategy guides posted on the wiki, ask questions in the Advice forum, players with lots of posts normally have the best advice.

There is a troubling lack of fat uniques, not even talking about normal monsters, and this is frankly quite problematic. The only fat unique is Snorg as seen by its tile. This adds insult to injury because Snorg is probably the ugliest unique and it implies that fat people are ugly. To better represent fat people in the game I propose that the tiles of Kirke, Margery and Norris are changed to be fatter. Their description could mention it too. "A big beautiful spellcaster in service to the powers of Hell..."

Wahaha wrote:There is a troubling lack of fat uniques, not even talking about normal monsters, and this is frankly quite problematic. The only fat unique is Snorg as seen by its tile. This adds insult to injury because Snorg is probably the ugliest unique and it implies that fat people are ugly. To better represent fat people in the game I propose that the tiles of Kirke, Margery and Norris are changed to be fatter. Their description could mention it too. "A big beautiful spellcaster in service to the powers of Hell..."

Blork is fat as crap too.

I sincerely hope this is satire though.

To all new players: Ignore all strategy guides posted on the wiki, ask questions in the Advice forum, players with lots of posts normally have the best advice.

Tiktacy wrote:While there exists plenty exceptions in the animal kingdom, it doesn't really make sense for a humanoid female to be superior in physical prowess to their male counterparts(particularly in the context of crawl, in which it seems nearly all enemies are trained for battle). Perhaps magical prowess or even dexterity, but physical prowess is a characteristic of males with few exceptions.

Ijyb and cerebov are not characterized by magical prowess(even a lowly salamander can cast fire storm!) or dexterity, they are defined by their much larger HP pools and physical ability compared to their counterparts. For this reason it makes more sense for them to be male. Ereshkigels for example makes sense, as she is defined by her high evasion and her unusually high HP can be explained by her existence as an archdemon(even then her HP is about average with the other archdemons, which again would make sense).

So goblins and gigantic fire demons existing is fine, but you draw the line at goblins and gigantic fire demons that deviate from conservative gender roles?And women live longer than men irl so surely women should be the ones with more HP, anyway

"Fat" is paired with "ugly" in two of the three monster descriptions it appears in, fwiw.

Tiktacy wrote:While there exists plenty exceptions in the animal kingdom, it doesn't really make sense for a humanoid female to be superior in physical prowess to their male counterparts(particularly in the context of crawl, in which it seems nearly all enemies are trained for battle). Perhaps magical prowess or even dexterity, but physical prowess is a characteristic of males with few exceptions.

Ijyb and cerebov are not characterized by magical prowess(even a lowly salamander can cast fire storm!) or dexterity, they are defined by their much larger HP pools and physical ability compared to their counterparts. For this reason it makes more sense for them to be male. Ereshkigels for example makes sense, as she is defined by her high evasion and her unusually high HP can be explained by her existence as an archdemon(even then her HP is about average with the other archdemons, which again would make sense).

Occasionally swaying from the norm like the way Dowan and Duvessa do is amusing and certainly very flavorful, but its a bad idea to delude that by flooding the game with female uniques that don't have any reason to be female outside of "just cuz."

Then again, this is a fantasy world where sandy beaches and oceans exist under ground and giant ant men can dig through rock walls as fast as they can run. So its not like extreme outliars existing often is that hard to swallow.

Not that it matters, but this isn't true. In WebTiles everyone uses the first doll tile on the list for their species, and those are intentionally ordered so that some "defaults" are male and some female. It'd be neat if we could pick a random one for each character or something, but that's outside my coding ability.